From failed Democrat to Trump’s unhinged enforcer: The strange career of Peter Navarro

Since August 27, when the US tariffs on India came into effect, millions of Indians have had to familiarise themselves with many US political personalities. This is especially true for those who consume news in vernacular languages or rarely pay attention to world affairs. Last week, in this star-studded sky of US-Indian political media, Peter Navarro’s name shone the brightest.

By now, you must have heard Navarro’s statement on Bloomberg TV, naming the war between Russia and Ukraine as “Modi’s war”. Later in the week, he appeared on Fox News, declaring India the “maharaja of tariffs”, and expressed his concern for Indians who don’t realise that “Brahmins are profiteering through the India-Russia oil trade at the expense of the Indian people. And we need that to stop.”

The last one landed him right into the quagmire of caste politics in India, invoking reactions from every side of the political spectrum.

But before we talk about his statements, here’s a little about Navarro.

He is the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing to US President Donald J Trump. Navarro had earlier served as director of the National Trade Council during Trump’s first term in office and then became the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Essentially, he is Trump’s main guy for trade policies.

Navarro grew up in a working-class family and spent his early years in Florida and Maryland. He attended college at Tufts University on scholarship, spent three years in the US Peace Corps, and subsequently completed his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. After teaching for a few years, he became a professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Irvine.

He used to be a Republican, who turned independent, and then became a Democrat. It may sound unbelievable today, but his innings in politics began as somewhat of an environmentalist; he founded an anti-growth group named Prevent Los Angelization Now.

Popular in San Diego political circles as a Democrat, he unsuccessfully ran for office five times in San Diego – for mayor in 1992, for city council in 1993, for county board of supervisors in 1994, for Congress in 1996, and once again for special city council in 2001.

But Navarro has never been a stranger to controversies.

Being appointed to the White House during the first Trump administration was a shock to those who knew him in San Diego. Before that, the two notable moments of his political career were being campaigned for and endorsed by the Clintons in 1996 and losing the mayoral race in 1992 when his opponent, Susan Golding, ended up crying on the debate stage due to his campaign tactics, shoring up the sympathy vote, which ended in Navarro’s defeat.

Today, he is a well-known trade hawk who believes in penal tariffs and holds a special grudge against China. Navarro is also infamous for inventing a businessman alter ego named Ron Vara, an anagram of his name, as a China expert to validate his hawkish stance against the country. He is also well known for his brazen and unfounded accusations against his political opponents and other entities.

His trademark style of functioning and work ethic has left a lasting impression on those who have known him over the years. In the words of Larry Remer to Politico, a veteran Democratic political consultant from San Diego who ran two of Navarro’s campaigns, he is ”the biggest asshole I’ve ever known.”

It may not seem much, but coming from a political consultant, that’s no small feat.

No wonder Trump likes and trusts Navarro, after all, he defied the US Congress and spent four months behind bars in defence of Trump. Now that you know who Navarro is, let's get back to his statement.

The ‘profiteering’ Brahmins

Newslaundry earlier reported the responses of various politicians and the Indian media on Navarro’s statement and his use of the word ‘Brahmin’.

Over the years, Trump has shown his knack for making statements that capture the attention of the media and public at large. It only makes sense that he trusts Navarro, who is also infamous for his baffling views and outrageous statements.

There is a good possibility that the statement, “Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people,” was deliberately made to incite some response and discussion in India as some tactical strategy. But true to the Trump administration archetype, Navaro didn’t really understand what he said.

Anyone who knows Indian society and politics understands that the term ‘Brahmin’ doesn’t mean the same thing in our discourse, and more importantly, doesn’t invoke the same emotions. For Indians, irrespective of their politics, the word Brahmin is associated with the age-old caste hierarchy and one aspect of the expansive, multi-layered caste politics in India.

In simple terms, even the most politically and socially oblivious Indian will never use the word ‘Brahmin’ for uber-rich Indian industrialist families. Which is exactly what Navarro meant.

In the US, the word Brahmin is associated with the term ‘Boston Brahmins’ or ‘The Brahmin Caste of New England’, which were used for the rich and politically influential families in those regions. They were coined by the author Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. in 1860, used first in his novel and in an Atlantic Monthly article titled ‘The Brahmin Caste of New England’.

He admittedly picked up the word from India and its caste system to portray how ‘Brahmins’ of New England were philanthropic, egalitarian, and scholars, a class of their own. The term ‘Brahmin’ in Western societies still signifies money, power, and influence. While Holmes may have intended to use the word defenestrated from the social context of its roots, it ended up becoming synonymous with the elite families of the region, who intermarried and avoided those they thought were beneath them.

Holmes considered himself one of the Boston Brahmins, and while the guy lived more than a century ago, I distinctly imagine him as the annoying Indian uncle who is also the president of the local Brahman mahasabha and believes in his caste supremacy. For those unfamiliar with the term, these mahasabhas are caste-specific groups that hold events to showcase their caste pride, meet regularly, and help in matchmaking within the caste circle.

Incidentally, as Navarro was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a suburb of the Boston metropolitan area, which is also closely associated with the ‘Boston Brahmins’, it is natural that he associates the word Brahmin with his own cultural context.

It is equally obvious that he doesn’t understand what it means in India. Now, millennia-old caste hierarchies, oppression, social context, and politics of caste and its complexity are subjects for a different piece.

However, even though the social hierarchies of New England and the history of ‘Boston Brahmins’ might be alien to us Indians, there’s no doubt that they wouldn’t hold a candle to Indian ‘Brahmins’ when it comes to abusing a social hierarchy for their own benefit.

Theatre of the absurd

The statements made by Navarro and other members of the Republican Party in the US (read Lindsey Graham) are just a media tool for pushing their narrative to force India to agree with US terms on trade, and submit to Trump’s ego. No more, no less.

The reasons behind Trump’s tariffs on India are transparent to anyone who keeps an eye on the United States’ and international politics, even if these obvious motives seem baffling.

Trump has long nurtured a bee in his bonnet about Obama, and he is hell bent on that elusive Nobel Peace Prize. Unhinged he may be, but he also understands that these are his last years to demand it, no matter what happens after his second term in office.

Before he was sworn into office, Trump made open claims about stopping the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of his coming to power. In less than nine months in his second term, he has gone from humiliating Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the White House in front of the world press, forcing him and other European leaders to agree to give away Ukraine’s precious resources for the promise of protection and peace, to meeting him again in August and calling him a great leader. He praised Putin in the beginning of his term, went on to threaten him with consequences, and has now circled back to his admiration for the Russian president. While Putin mocked every threat and ignored every proposal of peace by the US and EU for stopping the war in Ukraine, Trump recently met him in Alaska, in a way no US president has ever met a Russian head of state, and still, there has been no peace deal.

Even if we entertain the far-fetched hypothetical that Trump intends to bring peace in Europe through this policy, Trump has no way of forcing Putin to come to the negotiating table. Hence, the tariffs on India are meant to force Putin to the table.

The folly of penalising tariffs on India is inherent in its own hypocrisy. China buys significantly more oil from Russia, and the US has a much bigger trade deficit with China than India, the two primarily stated reasons for the tariffs on India. In 2024, the US trade deficit with India was $45.8 billion, while its deficit with China was a whopping $295.5 billion, the largest deficit the USA has with any country. If he really means to force the peace negotiations on Russia using the tariffs, then China is a way better candidate.

Furthermore, this policy exempts the refined petroleum products exports from tariffs, which the US and the EU buy from India, underscoring the senselessness of these tariffs. Navarro’s claims of warning the Indian public, or the safety of Ukrainians, are just pretenses for Trump wanting to brute force terms in a trade deal with India, and for humiliating him when he claimed that he brokered peace between India and Pakistan in May this year.

Trump’s policies seem to be undermining the US interests, resulting in mistrust and panic among US allies. Every US ally has been forced to reassess its options and long-term economic and security strategies.

To assess the irrationality that defines Trump and, in extension, his second term, on rational or logical grounds is nothing but an exercise in futility.

Trump and his yes men have never cared about anything except their own personal benefit, and they certainly don’t give two hoots about the history or future of caste hierarchies in India.

If they did, 15 minutes of research would have informed Navarro that Brahmins or the caste hierarchies of India are responsible for a lot of wrongs, but to accuse them of enriching themselves through refining and selling Russian oil… that’s just absurd.

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